Domingo Flores laughed when Anaheim police officers visited his apartment to check on his 10-year-old daughter.
The officers didn’t know it, but the girl was zip-tied to a bed in a back room at the time, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office . For years, the girl’s father and stepmother, Mayra Chavez, tortured the girl and her older sister, authorities said.
The couple were convicted and sentenced to prison in November and April for their cruel acts against the girl and her sibling, but a lawsuit filed by the girl’s biological mother seeks to hold the county and city of Anaheim accountable for the years of torture her daughters endured.
The lawsuit does not name the two girls — ages 10 and 13 — but highlights the torture inflicted on the younger sister.
Chavez and Flores plunged the girl’s head into ice baths, rubbed a pepper in her eye and repeatedly tortured her while denying her food, prosecutors said during a criminal trial last year.